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CONTACTO
By JESUS HERNANDEZ CUELLAR
Translated by GLADYS P.
MARTINEZ
Cuban MD Julio
Antonio Yebra shook the hand of each member of his firing squad and said he
forgave them. The order to fire mixed with his own cry condemning Communism.
Bound to the wood post he had been tied to, his body became lifeless. Seconds
later, the coup d'grace was heard.
In one of the "circulares" of the so-called "Model Prison"
of Isla de Pinos (prisoners referred to these buildings as "circulares"
because of their round shape), Cuco Muniz and Armando Valladares were talking in
front of cell 35 when a human shape fell from above and came crashing down on
the floor below them.
It was Jesus Lopez Cuevas. In a fit of suicidal desperation, he had thrown
himself from the fourth floor. He was dead.
Pedro Luis Boitel, former candidate to the presidency of the Federation of
University Students, believed that human beings must demand respect for
themselves through any means at their disposal. Along with several fellow
prisoners, he embarked on a tenacious hunger strike which had international
repercussions and silent accomplices. He died, dehydrated, on May 24 of 1972,
after 53 days of fasting in a Cuban prison. This was not the first hunger
strike he had organized.
Mario Chanes de Armas was fortunate to survive that living hell. But the
price he paid was to spend 30 years in the jails of the Castro regime, which
makes him the man to have served the longest prison term, for political reasons,
in the entire world.
Chanes de Armas suffered that fate in spite of having participated, along
with Fidel Castro, in the assault to the Moncada army barracks in Santiago de
Cuba on July 26 of 1953; in spite of having been one of the members of the
assault troop that traveled in the vessel Granma from Veracruz, Mexico, to the
coast of Oriente province, in 1956, to start the armed battle against Gen.
Fulgencio Batista, and in spite of the fact that the Revolutionary triumph of
1959 had found him in one of Batista's dungeons.
"I have never felt hatred or the wish for vengeance towards anyone;I
could never be a judge or prosecutor," stated Chanes de Armas to Contacto
recently. He was in jail from July of 1961 through July of 1991, accused of
planning assassination attempts against various leaders of the Castro regime.
The former political prisoner affirms that he was never part of any group
which attempted the assassination of any political leader.
In his book "Cuba: Myth and Reality," sociologist Juan Clark
asserts that the highest number of political prisoners that Cuba has had during
its entire history -all at the same time, having already been sentenced- was
approximately 60,000 (sixty thousand) in the decade of the 60s. Amnesty
International reports that approximately 20,000 (twenty thousand) prisoners were
released in the decade of the 70s.
Clark concludes that "as a basis for comparison, these figures would be
the equivalent of a country the size of the United States having between
1,410,000 and 1,466,000 prison inmates."
It is also asserted that during the Bay of Pigs invasion, in April of 1961,
more than 100,000 (one hundred thousand) Cubans were incarcerated in sports
stadiums, schools and theaters, as a precautionary measure, to prevent members
of the resistance from supporting the military operation.
Before the Castro regime, the time in Cuba's history during which the island
had the highest number of political prisoners was during the dictatorship of
Gen. Gerardo Machado, between 1929 and 1933, when approximately 5,000 (five
thousand) members of the opposition were sent to jail. It is reported that
during Batista's dictator-ship, between 1952 and 1958, there were approximately
500 (five hundred) political prisoners in Cuban jails.
Reports from the protagonists themselves are useful in identifying the
differences in treatment received. Here is a very important one:
"I have dinner: spaghetti with squid, Italian chocolates for dessert,
freshly brewed coffee and, after that, an H-Upman 4 cigar. Don't you envy
me?... When I go to get some sun in the morning, wearing shorts, and I feel the
sea air, it seems like I'm on the beach. They're going to make me believe that
I'm on vacation! What would Karl Marx say of such revolutionaries!"
The preceding quote is from a letter written by Fidel Castro during the time
he was in the Model Prison of Isla de Pinos serving a 15 year sentence for
having led the attack on the Moncada army barracks, as a result of which there
were approximately 100 casualties. Castro and his companions served just over
20 months of their jail sentences before being granted amnesty by the Batista
regime.
THE "HISTORIC" IMPRISONMENT
The so-called "historic imprisonment" of the Castroist era started
from the first few days that followed the Revolutionary triumph. First to be
condemned were members of the military from the deposed regime. Among them were
many who were executed as a result of unproven accusations for murders they had
allegedly committed during the fratricidal war that took place in Cuba between
December of 1956 and December of 1958.
"All along the island the firing squads did not stop executing people.
It was during that time that Capt. Antonio Nu§ez Jimenez declared that from
then on the year of 1961, which at first had been baptized as 'The Year of
Education,' would be called 'The Year of the Firing Squad.' And his prediction
became true," former political prisoner Armando Valladares states in his
book "Against All Hope." Valladares spent 22 years in Cuban political
jails.
Raul Castro, who was then commander-in-chief of the armed forces, said at
the time that "the henchmen we will execute will be no more than 400,"
referring to members of the military and those who had held political office
during the Batista regime.
The truth is that the exact number of people executed for political reasons
during the last 39 years of Cuba's history is not known, due to the fact that
the statistical data regarding these execu-tions is considered top secret; and
also because, in a larger or smaller scale, the executions have not stopped to
this day.
This "historic imprisonment" grew inordinately during the days
preceding the Bay of Pigs invasion, in April of 1961, when thousands of Cubans
were sent to jail. One of these was Eddy Carrera, prosecuted for "attempting
to take up arms in support of the invaders."
At that time, Carrera was serving as coordinator of the Christian Democratic
Movement in the province of Havana. He was in jail for 16 years.
Carrera, who had also been an opponent of the Batista dictatorship,
remembers the most difficult moments of his long prison stay: the real
executions by firing squad; the false executions where blanks were used -an
unfathomable torture; being forced to wear the blue uniform of common prisoners;
the cell inspections conducted by the military at the point of a bayonet; the
hunger strikes; the assassinations inside the jail, and many other experiences.
"Towards my jailers, I feel neither hatred, nor pity. I have mixed
feelings. One must bear in mind that a lot of them were ignorant, almost
savages," recalls the former prisoner.
"I am not opposed to justice being done, but I would do my best so that
there would be no acts of vengeance... All of them, like ourselves, have or
have had mothers, wives, children," adds Carrera.
Chanes de Armas recounts what might be described as the "most cruel"
act of psychological torture that has occurred in Cuban political prisons in
contemporary times:
Immediately following the air attacks of April 15 of 1961, which preceded
the landing at Bay of Pigs, dynamite was placed throughout the foundations of
the "circulares" at the Isla de Pinos prison so that, if there was an
attempt to rescue prisoners, or if there was a US military operation, the more
than 6,000 inmates there could be "blown to bits."
"We felt as if we were sleeping on top of a powder-keg... There were
men there whose nerves were unable to withstand this torture and who remained
emotionally scarred for life... It was unbearable to think that at any time we
could be blown to pieces by an explo-sion," relates Chanes de Armas.
There were explosives experts among the prisoners and, incredibly, they were
able to locate and disarm the cables that connected the numerous dynamite
charges with the detonators, which had a double activation system, both electric
and mechanical.
Nevertheless, the arduous labor involved in deactivating the detonators, "would
only gain us a few minutes...because these butchers, upon realizing that the TNT
was not exploding, that we were not blowing up in little pieces, would figure
out other methods to destroy us... It would have been enough for them to hit any
of the 'circulares,' since each of them continued being a powder-keg,"
Valladares relates in his book.
Many of the soldiers made fun of the prisoners during this time, and from
the outside they would signal with their hands that they could blow up the "circulares."
The dynamite was taken out shortly after the missile crisis of 1962.
STANDING STEADFAST
One characteristic of the first group of political prisoners which made
their imprisonment "historic," besides the period of time in which
they entered confinement, was that they refused to wear the blue uniforms of
common prisoners. The cost was violent confronta-tions, and physical and
psychological torture. Eventually they ended up almost naked, wearing only
their underwear shorts, for many years.
There were times when martial arts experts were used to force the prisoners
to wear the uniforms. This happened in all prisons. But when the government
tried to put this measure into effect, Eddy Carrera was in a work farm in Pinar
del Rio province. The year was 1967.
"They would take us, one by one, to a place in the farm and, in the
presence of judo practitioners, they would force us to wear the uniform...
whoever refused would suffer the arm and foot blows of the judo masters... many
of us ended us without any clothes, some seriously injured or with broken bones,"
recounts Carrera.
These men suffered various punishments throughout their prison terms. One
of the jailers' favorite ways to punish the prisoners was to place them in the
so-called "drawers," which were approxi-mately four feet wide by six
feet long. They were specially used in the prisons of Oriente province.
"Prisoners had to remain in them in a kneeling position. Those who
suffered that type of torture remained in the cells from five to six months,"
adds Carrera.
Clark mentions in his book another type of cell called "the rat trap,"
which was about seven by four feet, in La Caba§a prison. But he emphasizes
that in recent years the most utilized have been the "tapiadas"
(walled in) of the Boniato jail, as well as the "lock ups" and "death
rectangles" of the Combinado del Este in Havana.
The sociologist adds that "the cruelty of the penitentiary system of
the Castro regime is also implicit in the inadequate feeding of prisoners and,
occasionally, in the lack of adequate medical assistance, which has been denied
in different occasions as part of disciplinary measures against the prisoners."
Women of the opposition did not escape imprisonment. One of the best known,
Dr. Ana L. Rodriguez, author of the book "Diary of a Survivor," spent
19 years in Cuban jails.
NEW PRISONERS
Among the prisoners during this historic period, a good number of them were
incarcerated for more than 20 years. Ernesto Diaz Rodri-guez, former labor
activist and poet, was freed three months before Chanes de Armas. Eusebio Pe§alver,
a revolutionary fighter who was part of the army led by "Che" Guevara
during the war against Batista, returned to arms after the Castro triumph and
was captured in the Escambray mountains. He was in prison 28 and a half years.
It is believed that he is the male member of the black race who has spent the
longest time in jail, for political reasons, in the entire world, three years
longer than activist and present South African president Nelson Mandela.
In the meantime, however, a new type of political prisoner had joined the
others. Since the decade of the 70s, the Cuban authorities were not allowing
both groups to be together and would place the new group of prisoners directly
into political rehabili-tation programs.
Nevertheless, in May of 1983, Clark tells us in his book, prisoners who had
been condemned after 1979 also rejected the rehabilitation plan and called
themselves the "new, unwavering" political prisoner to differentiate
themselves from the previous group, or "historic" prisoners, who they
asserted had set for them an example in political dissidence.
It is said that, nowadays, prison sentences due to political reasons are
shorter, but more frequent.
Towards the end of 1991, the beating that poet Maria Elena Cruz Varela
suffered in front of her own house caused international repercussions. This
involved an attempt to force her to swallow the papers on which she had written
a "Declaration of Principles" in which she demanded freedom and
democracy for the Cuban nation. After the physical attack she suffered by "civilian"
mobs organized by the Ministry of the Interior, she was condemned to prison for
propagating "enemy propaganda." She was pardoned in 1993.
"Cuban women who have been political prisoners deserve that a pantheon
be erected to them when Cuba becomes free," states Chanes de Armas. "Then
and now, they too have been beaten and tortured in prison."
Since the start of the 'Concilio Cubano' (Cuban Council) and the independent
journalists' movement in 1995, numerous activists and professional reporters
have been arrested and expelled from the country. The waves of arrest of
opposition members have not stopped.
In June of 1997, Vladimiro Roca, Felix Bonne Carcasses, Marta Beatriz Roque
and Rene Gomez Manzano presented to the foreign press in Havana a document
titled "La Patria Es de Todos" ("The Mother-land Belongs to All"
A month later they were incarcerated. As of last April, they were still in
jail.
Statistics from the Cuban American National Foundation and the Group in
Support of the Cuban Council separately confirm that the jail population in Cuba
at the present time, including all types of prisoners, exceeds 275,000.
"As a way of comparison, Spain has approximately 40,000 prisoners in
its jails, and it is considered the European nation with the highest population
of prison inmates. However, Spain has 40 million inhabitants," points out
Rodolfo Gonzalez Gonzalez, member of the Group in Support of the Cuban Council,
in an article titled "In the Island of Prison Bars," which was
distributed by CubaNet through the Internet.
"Cuba, with only 11 million inhabitants, keeps in its jails more than
275,000 inmates, which is equivalent to almost the entire prison population of
Europe," adds Gonzalez Gonzalez.
"Other countries have gone through similar periods in their
histories... which is why I am a firm believer in democracy. I do not want
democracy for myself and dictatorship for my political enemies," ponders
Carrera.
"It is repugnant to see how some chiefs of state greet Castro. I am
sure that the French, for example, would not want for their own country a
political regime like the one there is in Cuba," adds Chanes de Armas.
In the words of Armando Valladares: "Man is the most wonderful of
nature's beings. To torture him, destroy him, exterminate him because of his
beliefs is, more than a violation of human rights, a crime against all of
humanity."
CONTACTO Magazine
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